Centrino gets 802.11a flavour

By Alun Williams

Posted on 30 Oct 2003 at 12:49

Intel has introduced PRO/Wireless 2100A network connections for Centrino notebooks.

Previously, Centrino technology involved built-in support for wireless networking using the 802.11b standard (via the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100). This has now been added to with support for the faster 802.11a standard, using the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100A.

Note, also, that Centrino support for 802.11g has been promised by Intel for before the end of the year.

Intel states that the PRO/Wireless 2100A is Wi-Fi certified and fully supports WPA and WEP security protocols and Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX).

Although it supports a theoretical transfer rate of at 54 Mbits/sec, 802.11a uses the 5.5GHz frequency spectrum rather than the 2.4GHz frequency spectrum used by 802.11b. Historically, this presented two problems: it is not back-compatible with existing 802.11b hardware and could not be used within the EC, as it had already allocated the 5.5GHz frequency spectrum to another technology (HiperLAN 2). There were changes in this area, however, and commercial public services have been allowed from 12 February 2003.

The arrival of 'a,' and forthcoming support for 'g', was reported back in September, when Intel boss Paul Otellini formally kicked of IDF Fall 2003 with the opening keynote,

In terms of wireless networking and 802.11 support, he said dual a-and-b support would appear shortly, 802.11g would be supported before the end of the year and tri-band support would be appearing in the first half of next year. He also said Intel was working on 'i', the high-security flavour of 802.11.